About the benefits and pitfalls of relying on analytical methods

About the Benefits and Pitfalls of Relying on Analytical Methods for capturing User Needs and

Requirements

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Analytical Methods in Systems Development

• Analytical and quantitative tools allow a rational treatment of a design problem that leaves little or no room for emotions or feelings.

• These approaches perform a clear decomposition of the design problem by distinguishing the various elements that should drive it i.e., the various requirements and their respective categories such as: mission, input/output, external interfaces, functional, non-functional, system wide, and technology requirements.


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• The clear definition of these requirements is a basis for generating an objectives hierarchy for the solution System.

• This hierarchy is a decomposition and quantification of the characteristics that describe an acceptable solution system.

• Functional analysis is often performed and aims at grouping and decomposing the functions of a system to discover the behavior embedded in it.


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• Functional analysis strongly depends on the initial formulation of various scenarios describing from a user standpoint what services are needed from the system (Use Cases).

• Performing functional analysis reveals some implied requirements that are not explicitly stated in the originating requirements and that are discovered by yet another decomposition and classification exercise.

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• Inputs, outputs become valuable instruments to capture the interaction taking place between functions and sub-function in terms of data, material, or energy transformed or transported within the system and between the system and its environment.

• Once a solution system is instantiated, it is evaluated to determine its degree of conformance to the objectives hierarchy.


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Pitfalls of Analytical Methods in Systems Development

• How many times have such rigorous analytical methods delivered systems that still failed to satisfy the real needs of the system’s users?

• The answer is: more often that Managers, Business Analysts, Architects, Engineers, and Developers would have expected.

• Of course one could blame such user’s dissatisfaction on some deviation from the ideal rigorous analytical and quantitative approach. In all fairness, some blame can be found there.


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• Let us make a bold statement here by holding also responsible the almost exclusive reliance that many Business Analysts, Engineers, and Developers place in trusting analytical and quantitative techniques.

• This trust is often oblivious to the fact that the needs that they think they are fulfilling could be blurred by the means used to perceive or capture them.

• An analytical decomposition and quantification of requirements is just one of several ways of perceiving and understanding the actual needs and purpose that a solution system intends to fulfill.


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• Certainly, this analytical approach is more aligned with the technical culture of the modern western world.

• Engineer and Analysts in the western world are educated to value and trust engineering efforts based on their use of well-defined analytical and quantitative techniques and tools.

• Many Engineers and Analysts tend to perceive needs in analytical and quantitative terms because they usually fulfill them by analytical and quantitative means.


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• Accurately capturing, communicating, and fulfilling the requirements of a system is a daunting task that has been and continues to be the object of many commendable research efforts.

• Sage [7] talks about the importance of technical direction and system management. He identifies twelve deadly systems engineering transgresses.

• For example, transgression one states: ”There is an overreliance on a specific analytical method or a specific technology that is advocated by a particular group”.


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• Sage also gives the following seven attributes of a sound system engineering process(or system development process): – 1: Is Logically sound

– 2: Is matched to the potential and organizational situation and environment extant.

– 3: Supports a variety of cognitive skills, styles, and knowledge of the human who must use the system

– 4: assists users of the system to develop and use their own cognitive skills, styles, and knowledge


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• Sage also gives the following seven attributes of a sound systems engineering process(or system development process):[continue]

– 5: Is sufficiently flexible to allow use and adaptation by users with differing experiential knowledge

– 6: Encourages more effective solution of unstructured and unfamiliar issues allowing the application of job specific experiences in a way compatible with various acceptability constraints

– 7: Promotes effective long-term management

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• The analytic and quantitative formulation of requirements does not capture accurately enough the full range or richness of information provided by stakeholders.

• For example, during face-to-face meetings, facial expression, tone of voice, gestures, and body posture carry 93% of the information content while verbal language only conveys the remaining 7% [Mehrabian 1971]


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• If we acknowledge the fact that biased information is incredibly rich [Draft and Lengel 1984] then capturing as much biases as possible from stakeholders during requirements elicitation sessions should be a valuable objective as opposed to being considered a deficiency.

• Rejecting bias in requirements definition implies denying their usefulness in identifying the characteristics of what stakeholders desire or despise.


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• One way of capturing biases through analytical means is to create a hierarchical ranking of the relative importance of selected requirements as perceived by the customers/users [1].

• This approach though valuable to exert analytically based trade-off decisions and system evaluations, is an imperfect way of capturing emotional dimensions of face-to-face communications.

• It is a subtle and often unconscious manifestation of the drive that many analytic thinkers have to define acceptability over seeking desirability [Yoshida Kosaku 1989].


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• Acceptability focuses on defining a precise boundary within which anything is acceptable.

• Desirability is holistic in nature; it addresses the somehow imprecise but more fundamental aim sought by stakeholders.

• Kurstedt[4-6] identifies and tries to reconcile three dimensions of the systems approach: The systems perspective, the generalist perspective, and the holistic perspective.


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• The systems perspective refers to the analytical view of a problem or system and the needs to which it responds.

• The holistic perspective (and generalist perspectives) must complement the system perspective in order to more effectively tackle and solve the significant engineering problems faced in our modern society.

• Refer to the presentation: The four thinking perspectives of the successful Business Analyst for further details on using system, generalist, and holistic thinking in Business Analysis.


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http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/the-four-thinking-perspectives-of-the-successful-business-analyst

http://www.slideshare.net/adidierk/the-four-thinking-perspectives-of-the-successful-business-analyst


• Kurstedt also reminds us that even though Western culture’s engineers and analysts have harder times understanding and applying holistic thinking, they are no strangers to it.

• Kosaku Yoshida [3] illustrates holistic thinking by giving the example of dating and asks the following question: “when you go on a date, would you evaluate whether your date has intelligence:96 points, appearance: 90 points, emotional stability 50 points? Do you evaluate your partner like that? If you get a date, turn off the light and get the smell; get the total understanding. You are not going to analyze. You are going to capture the entire feeling. That I call ultimate understanding”


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• The immediate reaction of an analytic thinker to this argument could be voiced as: “If a single person can make a choice based on a holistic thinking process then how do you reconcile the most likely different holistic choices that each system’s stakeholder would make?”

• One could answer this question by first pointing out that an analytic summing of individual holistic choices made by the members of a group yields neither an analytic solution nor a holistic one.


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• When a group has to make a decision using the holistic approach, the group must come together as a “Group” to get synergy through the holistic perspective.

• The human brain has this special ability to come to a conclusion from unconscious, incomplete or missing data; a group of human minds has the potential to do things an analytic model can’t, such as coming up with a synergistic answer.


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• Humans have this unique ability to gather and relate issues, characteristics, nuances, meanings, essences, alternatives, and criticalities ingredients all so needed to perform a holistic thinking process.

• The holistic perspective of a system wants to capture the system’s ultimate purpose or meaning.

• The meaning of a system transcends any system’s components or parts for they are only contributors to its essence.


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• Analytic means are inadequate to capture the ultimate meaning, purpose, and essence of a system.

• Deming illustrates the synergy effect by taking the example of an orchestra that gradually improves its performance to one day becoming able to soar: that special level of performance that can hardly be analyzed and that is rooted deeply in the hearts and minds of the orchestra’s musicians and conductor.

• A group of people can effectively exercise the holistic approach when they have mutual respect, good communication, a good participation process, and a shared purpose [5].


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References • [1] Buede Denis. The engineering Design of Systems. Wiley Series in systems

Engineering, New York, chap 9, 13 • [2]Daniel Jesse, Warner Paul W., and Bahill Terry A. Quantitative methods for

Tradeoff Analysis. The Journal of the International Council on systems Engineering volume 4 number 3-2001

• [3] Kosaku Yoshida. Transcripts of videotape Made in Japan “Whole”-istically, petty consulting/production, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990, p.11

• [4,5,6] Kurstedt H. A. Management Systems Theory, Applications, and Design. Virgina Tech Blacksburg, VA. 2000 chap 1.1.16.6, 1.1.27.4.3, 1.1.27.4.4, 1.1.16.2

• [7] Sage. Andrew P. Systems Management for Information Technology and Software Engineering. Wiley Series in systems Engineering, New York. 1995, p.7

• [8] Sage Andrew P. Systems Engineering. Wiley Series in Systems Engineering, New York. 1992, p.223

• [9] Sage Andrew P. Decision Support Systems Engineering. Wiley Series in Systems Engineering, New York. 1991, p.23

• [10] Daft L. Richard and Lengel H. Robert, Information Richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organization design (Organizational Behavior, vol.6, 1984, pp.191-223)

• [11] Kosaku Yoshida, Deming Management Philosophy: does it work in the US as well as in Japan? Columbia Journal of World Business, Fall 1989, p12.


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About the benefits and pitfalls of relying on analytical methods